


Each Year a Loss More Keenly Felt

by jujitsuelf



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Prompt Fill
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-02
Updated: 2013-09-02
Packaged: 2017-12-25 10:35:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 417
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/952065
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jujitsuelf/pseuds/jujitsuelf
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Prompt fill for - Supernatural - John Winchester - the boys' birthdays</p>
            </blockquote>





	Each Year a Loss More Keenly Felt

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer – All publicly recognizable characters, settings etc. are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author. No money is being made from this work. No copyright infringement is intended
> 
> ***
> 
> Prompt left by peaceful_sands at fic_promptly. 
> 
> This is set after John leaves Dean on his own but before Dean goes to Stanford to find Sam. Hopefully that makes sense!
> 
> ***
> 
> This is my first foray into the SPN fandom although I've been a lurker for years! *waves*

Each birthday which came and went was a special kind of hell for John. Every year he’d watch the calendar click around to Dean and Sam’s days, his heart growing heavier as they grew closer.

It wasn’t that he begrudged the boys their chance to be kids and be excited at the prospect of presents, as poor as they were sometimes. No, it was the memories which came flooding back which hurt.

Mary, smiling and laughing on Dean’s first birthday. Mixing cake batter for his second, waving the spoon at John, daring him to come get it and lick it clean. On Dean’s third birthday, John remembered Mary insisting that her boy was old enough to have a party with the other neighborhood kids. The house had been full of screaming youngsters for three exhausting hours. He’d taken refuge in the garage, tinkering with the Impala and trying to block out the frantic shrieks for ice cream and cake in high-pitched three year old voices.

Dean’s fourth birthday had been the last one Mary saw. It was a quieter affair, no party because Sam was still a newborn.

Of course, Mary never celebrated a birthday with Sam. Sam grew up thinking it was normal to have a father who got drunk on his special day. John hadn’t meant to do it every year but, damn, losing Mary was still a raw, open wound which never got even close to healing. Seeing the boys grow older without her was sometimes more than he could bear and the only way to solve things was to look at the world through the bottom of a whiskey bottle.

John knew his boys deserved more than he gave them but he just wasn’t the man to give it. He couldn’t bring their mother back but he could kill every last freakish thing which walked the earth and put other families through the hell they’d suffered.

Picking up his cell phone, he tapped out, ‘Happy Birthday, Dean’, then paused, his thumb hovering over the ‘send’ button. After a moment he squeezed his eyes shut, banged his forehead on the steering wheel of the stolen car he was driving and threw the phone aside. Dean could track a cell phone. Neither of his boys were dumb, sooner or later they’d find him and call him on the suicidal wild goose chase he was on. But he was close to finding the demonic bastard who’d taken Mary, he _knew_ it. Birthdays didn’t matter, revenge did.


End file.
